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News & Updates - Tuesday, August 29, 2006

What's Up In Asia?

Profitable, China-based ChinesePod says it is closed to raising Series A. Launched a year ago by the founder of a bricks n mortar Chinese language school, ChinesePod has over 240 Chinese language instruction podcasts in its library. Chinesepod.com has seen more than 5M downloads. Subscriptions to ChinesePod sell for $9-30 per month, with discounts if you sign up for longer than a month. It also offers corporate deals.

Learning language via podcasting is the way to go. We would expect to see, upon funding, ChinaPod to launch PolishPod, PigLatinPod, etc.
View ChinesePod site


SBI Group enters VC business with launch of $100M fund. India's biggest commercial bank - the State Bank of India (SBI) entered into the VC business with the launch of a $100M VC Fund in partnership with Japan's Softbank Investment. SBI will look to make investments in the $5-10M range. It expects to invest in business process outsourcing, life sciences, online businesses, technology-enabled design and manufacturing, nano-technology and environmental technology.
View - SBI Group site


Chinese finance website Hexun purchased a 70% stake in Guangzhou-based software company Patiosoft which sells stock market analysis software.

India's Tech Mahindra joined the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday. The telecom software and services firm offered about 11% of its total capital, which was oversubscribed 78 times, leading Tech Mahindra to price its shares at 365 Indian Rupees ($7.85), the top end of its proposed price band. And when the shares started trading in Bombay on Monday, they opened at Rs525, up 44 percent, and closed the day at Rs552.8, up more than 51%, giving the company a market valuation of $1.4B.
View - Tech Mahindra Site

Does India suffer a critical dearth of experienced tech entrepreneurs? That has been the subject of a lively debate among bloggers.
Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley points out that "India's traditional role is as the world's back-office and the skill set that has developed in India is that of engineering management and coding. As she sees it, the Indian managers may not understand global technology markets and may be found wanting in the marketing discipline. She thinks that services being the forte of the country - the VC partners tend to take the view that the entry barriers are low and the existing strong service players may get stronger and hence the investment appeal for funding startup service firms may go down."

Read - Venture Capital & Indian Entrepreneurial Growth